Exclusive: Spitting in the Face of Everyone Murdered on 9/11

I read about this last December, plans for a mosque at Ground Zero, but like a fool, I assumed that New Yorkers would never let this come to pass. A mosque just 600 feet from where the World Trade Center towers once stood. I thought to myself; no way will New York or anyone with a heart or soul, not to mention just plain common sense, ever allow a mosque to be built anywhere near Ground Zero. But, as I said, I am a fool.

The project of a community center /mosque is being proposed by two organizations, the American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA) and their sister organization, the Cordoba Initiative. This past Wednesday night they made their presentation to the Community Board of lower Manhattan (CB1). Twelve people sit on the board and would you like to guess what the final vote was? Get ready to grab a barf bag … the 12 members voted unanimously to support the project. Yes, it’s not a typo, it was unanimous, all were in favor and, to give you an idea of how excited the board members were, they applauded during the presentation.

"I realize it's not all of them, but I don't want to have to go down to a memorial where my son died on 9/11 and look at a mosque. If you ask me, it's a religion of hate." Deputy Chief Riches lost his son Jim, a firefighter, on 9/11.

Also quoted in the article was Rosemary Cain of Massapequa, L.I., whose son, firefighter George Cain, 35, was killed in the 2001 attacks, she called the project,

"a slap in the face. I think it's despicable. That's sacred ground," said Cain, "How could anybody give them permission to build a mosque there? It tarnishes the area."

The mosque would be located in a former Burlington Coat Factory outlet which is just 2 blocks or 600 feet from where the World Trade Towers once stood. I find it ironic that the building has been mostly abandoned since 9/11 because the landing gear of one of the hijacked airplanes crashed through its roof.

The leader and co-founder of the project, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, paid $4.85 million dollars for the building in December last year.

"a Trojan horse being rolled into our most sacred ground". He asked the mosque's imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf, where did Rauf get the reported $4.85 million in cash to purchase the building?

Needless to say, that question was never answered in full; Rauf would say only that the cash came from “members of the community.”

Tim Brown is a former NY firefighter and one of the few 9/11 survivors to survive the collapse of both WTC towers. He was also a first responder to the 1993 WTC bombing, also executed by a group of Islamic terrorists. He is the founder of the website thebravest.com.

I spoke with Matt Dunning, the Associate Editor of the Tribeca Trib newspaper on the telephone on Sunday. The Tribeca Trib is a monthly newspaper that covers lower Manhattan. Unlike most publications today, they actually report the news. Mr. Dunning explained to me that they “do not even do editorials for that reason”, they report on facts. He was at the CB1 board meeting Wednesday night. We spoke about his article on the meeting and I must say I was shocked when Dunning told me that “not one person from the community came to the meeting was in opposition. If someone had been, we would have reported it.”

This was a public board meeting, and no one who lives or works in this area even showed up to voice his or her opinion that they opposed the mosque? Have we actually arrived at the point in this country where forgiveness or ignorance overrides sense and responsibility?

Back on December 16th, 2009, in an article written shortly after the purchase of the building, Youssef M. Ibrahim wrote the following in Hudson NY,

“As a former New York Times and Wall Street Journal correspondent, and as a New York Sun columnist who covered Islamic fundamentalism extensively overseas and in the USA, I find the facts oddly lacking. The story as reported fails to answer, and avoids asking, so many pertinent questions.

The source of money matters as a significant part of the hundreds of mosques being built and already erected in this country double up as cultural Islamic centers for distributing literature-- Islamist propaganda in fact—from Bay Ridge Brooklyn to Detroit, and for schools growing Muslim minorities. They house Imams of unknown origin and education, many of whom do not speak a word of English but preach in Arabic and Urdu -- radical messages, it often turns out.

As a reporter familiar with the Arab communities of the USA, I doubt the faithful fork out all that money for mega mosques, and if they did, the mayor’s office should prove it, not merely accept someone’s say so. It is an established fact that a significant percentage of the mosques built in the USA in the past two decades are receiving a disproportionate amount of their funds not only from the Saudis, but also the UAE, Qatar and Iran -- all problematic Islamists activist nations. The government just discontinued work on a major Iranian-funded mosque and center in New York City, which had operated under the radar since the days of the good old Shah of Iran under the auspices of the Pahlavi Foundation, and has been owned since 1979 by the Mullahs of Iran.

The context here is that 15 of the 19 perpetrators of the attacks -- on the very site where this new mosque shall rise -- came from Saudi Arabia.”

He ended his article with “One would hope for a follow-up story or stories, and that New York City and its citizens at least ask harder questions, rather than submit to being misled in the interest of political correctness.”

The estimated cost for the 13 story building is $100 million dollars. According to page 8 of the ASMA website financial statements for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2009 they have “temporarily restricted net assets” as follows:

Interestingly, I had no trouble locating all of the groups as linked above, except for the Qatar government fund, which donated over half a million dollars to ASMA in 2009.

The fact that the UN has a hand in this really comes as no surprise given that just last week they embraced the Islamic Republic of Iran by allowing them to become a member of The Commission on the Status of Women, as I wrote about in my article “Even if it were a joke, it wouldn’t be funny”.

Also, according to the same financial statement, on page 10 of the report they list their “Expenditure report for the period October 13, 2008 to June 30, 2009” leaving ASMA with a balance of $988,586.00 when converted from Euros to Dollars using the conversion noted on the same page.

So, assuming this “independent” audit is correct they ended their fiscal year on 6-30-09 with a balance of almost 1 million dollars. I wonder then, where is the money for a 100 million dollar mosque coming from?

As Youssef M. Ibrahim wrote in his article “It is an established fact that a significant percentage of the mosques built in the USA in the past two decades are receiving a disproportionate amount of their funds not only from the Saudis, but also the UAE, Qatar and Iran -- all problematic Islamists activist nations.”

Does anyone have the sense to connect the dots and follow the money trail? Is it not enough that the terrorists who were responsible for 9/11 are from the same country that is funding mosques all over our country, that we have to allow them to fund the building of a mosque in the very location where they committed the most heinous act in American history?

Using this analogy, had the bomb last week in Times Square actually exploded, we would be planning a mosque in Times Square right now. Have we lost our minds so much that we have moved to erecting monuments to perpetrators and not victims?

Currently, in the U.S. there are over 1200 mosques, with at least one in each state. I don’t see the need to build a new mosque at the same location where nearly 3000 people were murdered by terrorists who followed an Islamic ideology that will be preached inside this new one.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Gadi Adelman is a freelance writer and lecturer on the history of terrorism and counterterrorism. He grew up in Israel, studying terrorism and Islam for 35 years after surviving a terrorist bomb in Jerusalem in which 7 children were killed. Since returning to the U. S., Gadi teaches and lectures to law enforcement agencies as well as high schools and colleges. He is currently writing his first book, "Terrorism; Understanding the Threat". He can be reached through his website http://gadiadelman.com

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